North light-rail-line costs estimated

By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The agency's board yesterday formally selected an all-tunnel alignment with stations at First Hill, Capitol Hill, Husky Stadium, and Northeast 45th Street and Brooklyn Avenue Northeast as its preferred route north.

Sound Transit staff members estimated the capital costs at $1.7 billion to $1.85 billion in 2002 dollars. In an analysis last November, light-rail foe James MacIsaac of Bellevue pegged the same costs for a nearly-identical route at $1.567 billion, also in 2002 dollars.

Those figures don't include financing costs or project reserves, which together account for about 14 percent of the total price tag of the 14-mile, $2.4 billion line Sound Transit is building now between downtown and Tukwila.

They also don't account for inflation. According to the index Sound Transit uses, construction costs are projected to increase 16 percent between 2002 and 2008.

Sound Transit's figure also doesn't include about $110 million that's already been spent on the project.

MacIsaac, a transportation consultant affiliated with the anti-rail group Citizens for Effective Transportation Alternatives, said he's pleased Sound Transit's new estimate is in line with his.

"It sounds like they're starting to get more realistic," he said. "At least they can't say MacIsaac is going around overstating the real cost."

MacIsaac has charged Sound Transit is hiding the true cost of light rail. He estimates the total, inflation-adjusted cost of a 24-mile light-rail line from Northgate to SeaTac at $7.9 billion.

Sound Transit doesn't have a figure of its own, but it says MacIsaac's is too high.

Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick said that, while MacIsaac's estimate of the capital cost of the downtown-University District segment is fairly accurate, his calculations for other proposed segments are way off.
 
Martin Schachenmayr, light-rail project-control manager, said the new estimate for the downtown-to-University District segment is preliminary and not up to Sound Transit's usual standards.

It was prepared in a hurry because the board was considering joining the three-county Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) in placing a big roads and transit proposal on the November ballot.

The so-called "joint ballot" offered the promise of $800 million or more to help get light rail to the University District years earlier than Sound Transit now plans.

But the partnership idea died yesterday. Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, Sound Transit's board chairman, informed his colleagues that RTID almost certainly will not be on the fall ballot because big business has withdrawn its support.

After that, the board's discussion of a possible joint ballot focused on 2005 — though Metropolitan King County Councilwoman Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, who also sits on the RTID board, raised the possibility of an advisory ballot this fall.

The Sound Transit board did tie up one loose end yesterday, selecting the block on Brooklyn Avenue Northeast south of Northeast 45th Street as the preferred site for the University District station. The alternative, on Brooklyn north of 45th, was opposed by neighborhood and business groups.

Now that a preferred route north has been identified, Sound Transit will spend the next year studying it in more detail.

Funding remains a problem, however. The agency has just $248 million available now, though it says more could surface if the 14-mile line now under construction comes in under budget. Sound Transit also is hoping for $500 million in federal grants.

Liberalizing some of the agency's financial policies and assumptions also could generate up to $195 million. But Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps, the board's finance chairman, opposes that.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com